During Pride month the New Jersey Assembly Education Committee voted to approve legislative bill A3446 or the Freedom to Read Act.
The bill, along with its companion bill, S2421, establishes specific requirements for library material in public school libraries and public libraries and establishes protections for school library staff members and librarians.
“This conversation is going to be civil,” said commitee chair Assemblywoman Pamela R. Lampitt (D-6).
Assemblywoman Mitchelle Drulis (D-16), the prime sponsor of the bill, opened testimony with a public comment. Drulis’ district covers North Hunterdon-Voorhees, which is home to one of the more contentious book ban considerations among school board members. In fact, the violent vitriol against North Hunterdon-Voorhees High School librarian Martha Hickson had inspired the bill’s introduction to the committee by Drulis.
“I am here to support the ‘Freedom to Read Act,’” Hickson said. “I have been a high school librarian since 2005 — 19 years. It has been a job I have truly loved, but for the last three years I have been the target of book banners.”
Hickson identified these attacks as part of an anti-LGBTQ propaganda campaign, specifically to target five award-winning books for young adults with LGBTQ themes. Librarians pick books and educational material with the acknowledgement that students’ needs, interests, and developmental appropriateness are at the center, confirmed Hickson to the committee.
“Rather than following the (school) board’s established complaint policy, they coordinated a public performance of scripted outrage. After a four-month reconsideration process, the board retained all five books, affirming that the titles meet the district standards,” said Hickson.
In the meantime, Hickson received hate mail. She was stalked at her home and she was trolled on social media. Some colleagues have shunned her, and some administrators have harassed her. Some people have even called for her arrest and termination. Hickson’s health has declined in the process she says.
“The bill ensures that parents have a process for raising issues without resorting to bullying and character assassination,” Hickson said.
Drulis identified the legislation as an important requirement for freedom of expression and diverse, inclusive, and age-appropriate content in public schools and public libraries while protecting school library workers from harassment. She, like Hickson, identified school libraries and public libraries as centers for “voluntary inquiry,” which she says play a unique role in promoting intellectual freedom, equity to learning, and democracy.
Drulis ensured that those with a “vested interest” including “educators, administrators, and parents” would serve on a local committee to “challenge content” or decide the future of a book in a public school library or public library. Additionally, through this bill out of state organizations and individuals are no longer allowed to “ride into New Jersey with a political agenda” to target public libraries.
“Parents will continue to have the right to decide what their own child reads. But one parent should not have the ability to solely determine what another parent’s child can read,” Drulis said.
There were many speakers at the commitee hearing. Most made sure to acknowledge librarians as experts in the profession of keeping libraries and ensuring the developmental growth of the youth they were hired to care for. “School librarians are the professionals who are certified and trained in collection development,” said Beth Raff, president of the New Jersey Association of School Libraries.
“Collection development” is the professional duty of a librarian to manage, update, and develop collections of books (print and digital). This includes digital media and the reference databases at a library. Ultimately, a librarian must earn a library science masters degree. This requirement in licensing is to ensure quality care from librarian to student regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, ability, and socioeconomic status.
Lauren Albrecht, director of advocacy and organizing for Garden State Equality, also recognized the right of a librarian’s professionalism to pick appropriate material for all students under their jurisdiction. “People with immense amounts of knowledge and education and dedication are subject to harassment by a small but vocal group seeking to make trouble and seeking to make life more difficult for LGBTQ people,” Albrecht said.
The American Library Association (ALA) has documented 4,240 books targeted for censorship in 2023, more than doubling (by 65%) targeted book bans in 2022, with the addition of 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources for all students, according to the ALA’s website. Book banners disproportionately target books with LGBTQ themes and Black and Indigenous histories and stories. The top ten most attacked titles have LGBTQ themes.
Some teachers and many LGBTQ students — in particular, transgender, nonbinary, two-spirit, and gender-diverse students — have experienced the brunt of attacks by anti-LGBTQ extremists.
While book ban attempts have become a weekly news item in the Garden State, so have anti-trans policies. At least 16 school districts recently revoked state New Jersey Policy 5756 — the state’s transgender guidance for local shool districts. At times, the policy has been revised to include the passing of what LGBTQ activists have dubbed “forced outing” or divulging a student’s potential change in gender expression, pronouns, or name used on school grounds to the parents. The new “forced outing” policies some districts have adopted force an educator or school employee to tell a parent about what they know of the student’s private life as a result of their possible trans or gender nonconforming status.
This has been a cornerstone of the anti-LGBTQ “parents’ rights” activists’ demands for censorship, not only in New Jersey, but throughout the entire country. Eight states in the U.S. require forced outing of a student, while one state (Louisiana) promotes the policy, according to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP).
Anti-LGBTQ parents’ rights activists showed up to the June proceeding for the “Freedom to Read Act.” They encouraged the Assembly Education Committee members to vote “no” or abstain from voting.
Victoria Jakelsky, director of New Jersey Parental Rights, protested for more parental control in the public school library. Moms for Liberty, a designated extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, agreed with Jakelsky. Nevertheless, even if politicians pave new pathways for parents to raise issues, parental rights are already integrated into the administrative policies in New Jersey public schools.
“[F]ederal and state courts have recognized that parents have a fundamental right to raise their children without state interference.” This is unless, however, “the parent-child relationship harms the children or places the children at risk of harm,” according to the Constitutional Parental Rights of New Jersey.
